Brian Bergamaschi (Former Employee)

San Francisco Bay has a long history of being subject to natural resources exploitation and pollution. Ongoing flux of contaminants into the bay, legacy pollution from the Gold Rush era and structural modifications still influence the natural ecosystem today. This project aims to map multiple forms (i.e. species) of mercury -- one of the major contaminants in the bay -- to help inform restoration...

This project focuses on the downstream effects of wildfires on lakes, reservoirs, and coastal water within the larger context of the USGS project on Post-fire Hazards and Impacts to Resources and Ecosystems (PHIRE): Support for Response, Recovery, and Mitigation. The overall objective of this work is to leverage the historic satellite remote sensing record to provide insight on the impact of...

The Biogeochemistry (BGC) Group uses an interdisciplinary approach to address surface water quality issues and food web dynamics throughout California, particularly in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay.

Since 1969, the Water Quality of San Francisco Bay Research and Monitoring Project has conducted water-column sampling along the deep channel of the San Francisco Bay-Delta system. Learn more about when and where we collect data.

The Water Quality of San Francisco Bay Research and Monitoring Project measures changes in water quality along the deep channel of the San Francisco Bay-Delta system using submersible sensors and discrete water samples. Learn more about how we collect and measure water-quality data.

The Research Vessel David H. Peterson begain service with the U.S. Geological Survey in 2015. Named after a founder of the Water Quality of San Francisco Bay Research and Monitoring Project, this vessel is a high-tech scientific platform for estuarine research. Learn more about how the R/V David H. Peterson makes our research possible.

Sediments represent an important pool of nutrients in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta). The exchange of nutrients between the water column and the benthos impacts water quality and effects phytoplankton, harmful algal blooms, aquatic vegetation, and drinking water quality. To date, there is very limited information about nutrient pools in Delta sediments, nor how these nutrients are...

Planned upgrades to the Sacramento Regional wastewater treatment plant (SRWTP) will substantially reduce nutrient discharge and also alter the types and amounts of nutrients being distributed across the San Francisco Delta and Estuary (Delta). One highly anticipated outcome of lower nutrients is improved productivity in the phytoplankton communities that supply aquatic food webs, which should...

Since 1969, the U.S. Geological Survey has maintained a research project in the San Francisco Bay-Delta system to measure and understand how estuarine systems and tidal river deltas function and change in response to hydro-climatic variability and human activities.

Tidal marshes are important ecosystems in the San Francisco-Bay Delta. They remove carbon from the atmosphere, they build up soils that buffer our communities from sea level rise, they provide critical habitat and food resources for a diversity of species, and they reduce excessive nutrients which have a negative impact on water quality. As a result of land-use change and urbanization, the San...

The NASA-USGS National Blue Carbon Monitoring System project will evaluate the relative uncertainty of iterative modeling approaches to estimate coastal wetland (marsh and mangrove) C stocks and fluxes based on changes in wetland distributions, using nationally available datasets (Landsat) and as well as finer scale satellite and field derived data in six sentinel sites.

Water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta contains high concentrations of disinfection byproduct-forming (DBP-forming) materials when treated for potable use. DBPs form when dissolved organic compounds (DOC) in water react with disinfectants such as chlorine and ozone during the water treatment process. The amount of DBPs that form is a function of both the amount and source of the DOC, both of...